Web Design

Da da, daaah… Web Design is where most people get fleeced, ripped off, tripped up or at the very least spend more than they need to get less than they want.  You don’t need a university education to publish excellent content on the Internet. Once more: You don’t need a university education to publish excellent content on the Internet. I also think you shouldn’t pay someone to do something you can do a very respectable job of yourself, given you have a few pre-requisite clues. I know, because I made this site and I didn’t use a single thing I learnt in trade school, on computer courses or later, university to do so. Making this site was only a tiny bit more challenging than creating a formal letter in Microsoft Word. What I did do, was to leverage the marvellous ‘Open Source’ community’s efforts and install WordPress. Once WordPress was installed, which took about 2 minutes on the server, I logged in with the user I had created, created all the pages you see in the site now, putting some (very) basic info into every one, sticking to conventions like having ‘Home’ and ‘Contact’ pages, which visitors expect. I made a menu with those pages and structured it, so it would make sense to people visiting the site.

I went back and ‘fleshed out’ each page with text. Every time I finished or updated a page, I clicked Publish and WordPress published it. I moved sections from page to page. I would check it and change if required, or just move on to the next page. When I didn’t want something that WordPress had provided by default, like the first blog post, the first site page and the first comment, I simply removed it and replaced it with what I did want or left it empty. I don’t really intend to post to and then maintain a blog, so I removed it. I was slowed down a bit when I ran into all this typing though, I will admit. Every paragraph in this document was examined no less than a dozen times and the whole page edited over a few hours, but that’s just me. The point is: It could be you editing your own site… Someone can do it for you, no problemo. Each and every time you want something done, especially to get started, they’ll be thinking: ‘$$$ Cha-Ching $$$”. So, do it yourself and pocket the cash instead. If you don’t want to do it yourself, have your most interested staff member do it, or the 19 year old kid next door with too much time on their hands. If the site runs off the rails completely, it can soon be removed and replaced with the template you started with, or otherwise adjusted so that it is right. I guess the greatest feature that WordPress has is the ability to very quickly apply predefined ‘Themes’ to the site. For visitors to your site, after you’ve applied a new theme, it looks just like a complete re-design of your site. Really though, the structure and pages are the same but the whole site looks fresh and new. You can apply a new theme to your website every day if you choose. Probably you could apply one every day from now on and never run out of new themes to apply to your site. There are indeed some very attractive and clever themes available, every time you apply one, you leverage the efforts of someone who was motivated to build that theme for their own sense of accomplishment and pride and they’ve generally done their very best work. Every account is afforded the opportunity to install a range of pre-provided scripts such as WordPress and you can have virtually as much guidance as you need to do anything you like on the webserver. We’ll generally guide you to do it yourself. I prefer to teach people how to fish than keep throwing them my own fish. We’ll help you help yourself, you’re far more brilliant than you give yourself credit for.

We can manage that for you too. Let’s be very clear about your expectations before we start, though. If you can provide examples of what you want and you already have something for us to publish for you, or relevant photos, or text from a newspaper ad, or know someone who does, or a list of relevant competitor sites that you like or dislike and you’re prepared to invest 20 minutes in a conversation about what your aims for the website are and what your expectation is, that’s great. We can probably help you, especially if you have any sort of artistic tendency, because we (well, I) don’t. I mean, I can identify something that’s really bad, um, well, actually, no I can’t. If I can read it and it makes sense then its good for mine. The layout and what is more attractive is someone else’s department. While the rest of my class was doing art, I was doing my maths homework or sanding some woodwork, so bring along another opinion when it comes to choosing a theme or colours for your site. You want Green and Blue, I just happen to think that looks very nice together, off we go, same for Purple on Brown and Red on Green.

If you just wanna holler “Hey build me a website” across the interwebs, we might build a website, but it likely won’t be what you want and then you won’t be happy, then we really won’t be happy and we really do strive for happiness, so we won’t do that. What I’m getting at is that we can’t want it more than you do. If you’re up for it, we can probably turn your great idea into a reality. You’ve got to bring the vision to the party or at least be able to inspire ours somehow.

Web Design work isn’t cheap, especially here, but it can be very good. Ask for a portfolio of sites that have already been developed by your intended developer. It’s a similar hourly rate that you might expect to pay for a plumber or an electrician. For this sort of rate, they’ll open and develop cascading style sheets, build databases and queries and edit html, php and javascript directly. If that comma isn’t in exactly the right place, they’ll move it. My advice to you, if engaging a web developer, is to paint with a broad brush, don’t focus them on inconsequential or small detail in your site. Use their skills to build the framework you need, a workable logo that you can keep and get you the access to the site they built, which you need to edit to keep it fresh and then get them off retainer as quick as you can. Never allow the web designer full control of your site. If your relationship sours, you need to be able to engage another developer and lock the last one out. My advice is to leverage as many good features as you can with plugin technologies and pre-designed themes and the like. Why would you have a site composited by a bricklayer, or a wood wholesaler, or whatever you do, when you can have an award winning professional web developer do it for free just by applying their theme.